Currency

a pocket can sometimes be

a kind of prison,

I have never lived in

a cash economy where the bill

fold unfolds to find someone

creased in the middle,

but perhaps credit moves

the same, the way it scores

the pocket and the body

boxed and bureaued

the edge of a card

cuts anything  akin to skin

a Dollar, a Euro, a World

Bank, a debt to erase, a wait

a race, a weight.

Credit

From The Next Verse Poets Mixtape: Volume One (Central Square Press, 2016). Copyright © 2016 by Fred L. Joiner. Used with the permission of the poet.